The 3-0 Kansas City Chiefs will go into Monday Night Football as five-point favorites over the home team Denver Broncos.
Monday Night Football this week will see the primetime debut of Patrick Mahomes as he and the Kansas City Chiefs head to Colorado to take on the Denver Broncos. The public must be impressed with the Chiefs 3-0 start, as according to Oddshark.com the Chiefs are five-point favorites.
A line that big in favor of a home team on MNF shows that the Chiefs are a team the public has bought into. Denver has started this season 2-0 at home where they have a notoriously strong home-field advantage. In fact, this is only the second time in the last 27 years that Chiefs are a favorite in the mile high air of Denver.
When you look at the first three weeks of the NFL season it’s no wonder why the Chiefs would break the historical trend and be favorites in this game. Mahomes and the Chiefs offense are lighting up the NFL in historical fashion. The 118 points the Chiefs have scored in the first three games of the season is a franchise record and just nine points shy of the NFL record of 127.
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The offense has been so good that Mahomes is the current favorite to win the MVP award and the Chiefs are the favorites to win the AFC. This is in spite of the fact the defense currently ranks dead last in points and yards allowed. The Broncos aren’t underdogs because they are a bad team, they are underdogs because they are playing one of the best teams in the NFL.
I say the Broncos aren’t a bad team, and that is true, but they aren’t a good team either. The Broncos sit with a 2-1 record with victories over the 1-2 Seattle Seahawks and 0-3 Oakland Raiders. Their one loss came last week against the 2-1 Baltimore Ravens in a game where they allowed the most points of the season (27) while scoring their fewest points of the season (14).
The Broncos are scoring 20 points a game while their defense is giving up 23 points per game. When the strength of your team is still weak by league standards, you aren’t going to get much love going against a Super Bowl favorite. But, the game is still played a mile above sea level in primetime against a team with revenge on their mind. It’s cliche but it’s also true, throw the records out the window when this game kicks off Monday night.
That all being said, the Chiefs come into this game 7-1 against the spread in their last eight games while the Broncos are 0-4-1 in their last five. Not only have the Chiefs won five straight against the Broncos straight up, but they are also 5-0 against the spread and 4-0-1 against the spread in Denver. The weather is scheduled to be perfect football weather, and the fan base in Denver is already growing apathetic. Take the Chiefs and the points this week.
As with every game so far this year, the most interesting bet of the week is the over/under for a Chiefs game. This week the over/under has been set at 55.5 points and I can’t help but laugh at how low that number is. To think you would predict a defensive battle between the 30th and 16th scoring defenses going against the first and 19th ranked offenses is at best odd. Take the over this week as I predict this will be a 35 to 24 type victory for the Chiefs.
It feels odd to be so confident heading into a primetime game in Denver, but odd feelings are something Chiefs fans will have to get used to this season. This will be a year of odd feelings for Chiefs fans, but you only need to look across the parking lot to understand those them. Ask any Kansas City Royals fan how the felt when they had these same emotions in 2015 when nothing felt familiar, and we thought in ways many of us had never thought before.